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Recent Entries to this Blog
"And so to bed." (with thanks to Dr. Johnson)
Posted: 02 Aug 2010 Posted: 26 Jul 2010 Posted: 03 Sep 2009 Posted: 14 Aug 2009 Posted: 07 Aug 2009 All Entries |
From Here to "IT"Since beginning a blog on Garden Stew, my focus has been almost exclusively on a 200-year old house, Melrose, in which we are honored to be saddled with its restoration. Melrose, however, is not the only house in our lives. It is a house we renovate in the hope that it will be a home someday, but we also have a home more than three hours drive away. That house has been my home for nearly 13 years, and when my wife of many years died nearly four years ago, I was left with our large, Georgian home and the sizeable English/Southern garden that had been the focus of my leisure hours for almost a decade. In time, I met someone else, one thing led to another, we married, and it will come as no surprise that that changed the dynamic of my life in many ways, including raising questions about our home and garden. It must be said first and foremost that the home we have is truly wonderful and if I never leave it until I'm toes up, I will have been blessed many times over. However, when we take a dispassionate look at our home we also conclude that it is too large, its formality no longer reflects the lives we live, and it is not particularly dog or kid friendly (we have both), Which brings me to a third house that has entered the picture. It isn't, as of now, a real house. It exists only on paper, the outgrowth of a desire to have a house that is uniquely ours, that is smaller and further out in the country, and that reflects a less formal, more laid back family. That vision of a Carolina Arcadia competes for time in the ether of my imagination with the demands of our beloved Melrose. Warning- what follows is a digression that really does have a bearing on this blog. I anticipate that long before Almighty God calls me to task for my many sins and transgressions, my Irish ancestors will berate me for having become an Anglophile. They probably look upon that as being a serious character defect. But there it is. I'm an unabashed Anglophile. So, here before the world I've exposed my Anglophilia like a zipper you forgot to pull up, and I just know that those Irish ancestors are yet spinning in their graves at the tarnished image of me as one of their descendents. I point out this grievous shortcoming in my character to explain that for several decades my Anglomania has shaped and colored my choice in architecture and my preference in garden styles. I live in a Georgian home, have a somewhat Georgian garden, enjoy a home furnished in the English Country style, watch Masterpiece Theater, and have been known to fake a British accent to the amusement of real Brits.. But times change, hair grays, tummies pot and we evolve. Faced with the idea of having a smaller house that we could call our own, I discovered that my evolution had gone in the direction of Tuscany and Provence. Perhaps that really isn't such a far stretch for my Anglophilia, since I understand the English flock to the Luberon and there are so many in rural Italy that it is sometimes referred to as Chiantishire. To my knowledge, I have not so much as a drop of Italian or French blood, which shows how life has shortchanged me, so where this rather late blooming interest in Tuscan-like architecture bubbles up from is one of those mysteries best left to Wimsey. When I think of Tuscan/Provencal design, my imagination is driven by pictures of homes in those regions. I am not thinking of what passes for Tuscan/Provencal among so many American contractors and even some architects, who cobble together a gargoyle-like style that passes for Tuscan, or Italian or rustic French. Lacking any other appellation, it goes by the name Mediterranean. While I do not want to cast unnecessary aspersions on these home styles, I want to quickly point out that they are not the direction in which we have gone over the past few months. Speaking only for myself, I knew at some intuitive level what I wanted and I knew that as soon as I saw it, it would give me a swift kick in the keester, and I'd recognize it. It wouldn't be a "could be" or "should be" or "maybe." It would be "IT." But we had to have an architect's help getting there. I've actually come to the conclusion that working with an architect is a bit like working with a sculptor in creating a statue out of a block of marble. The sought-after figure is embedded in the marble; the sculptor's job is to chip away until the figure is freed. That's what we've been doing with our long-suffering architect. With him, we have chipped slowly, methodically away at a concept, and all the time I've known by faith and gut that the moment would come when I would see it, and it would announce itself at some visceral level as being not just it, but IT. The other day, that moment arrived. This blog entry has been viewed 142 times
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I understand completely. WE NEED SOME PICS once you've had some time to enjoy your perfect "lil bit o' heaven". We're willing to wait patiently!
Change is good for the mind and soul.
Would love to see pictures. Don't wait till you are finished! We would love to take this journey with you and your wife. Login or register to leave a comment. |
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